Quatre Vingts
by Shay McSudonim
Summary: ...or "Four Scores" for those of you who want an English title. An alternate take on 20/20/20/20 mode.
1. Chapter 1

The reason that Mike Schmidt kept coming back to his job night after night was quite simply because he was suicidal. He did not have a good childhood. High School was hell. College (what little he got) was worse.

Right now, he was at the end of his rope. There were no jobs to be had, he was up to his eyeballs in debt, student and otherwise. His family had cut him off. His boyfriend had left him. And he was fast approaching mental breakdown.

His nights at Freddy's served as a sort of catharsis. They made him feel alive, though definitely not in a good way. The whole thing was dramatically unhealthy, to tell the truth.

This particular day, however, things were a good deal worse.

Someone had hacked his bank account and stolen all of his money. It'd been a week today and the bank still refused to believe him. Rent was due in two days.

His house had been broken into. There hadn't been anything of value to steal, so the thief had pissed on his bed as they'd left.

That night, Mike went into work (overtime. He needed the money), to discover that he could adjust the AI levels of the animatronics.

Since he'd had that kind of week, he turned all of the levels up to 20, expecting that he wouldn't live out the night, and folded his hands behind his head, not even bothering to check the camera feeds.

He wondered briefly, as the clock changed over to midnight, whether it would be Foxy or Freddy who got him first.

Pounding feet down the hallway seemed to indicate Foxy.

For one brief second, Mike's hand hovered over the door button. Last chance, he thought to himself.

He moved his hand back to his desk.

Foxy flashed into the office the next second and Mike gritted his teeth. On second thought, this was going to be incredibly painful. Maybe he should have just bought a gun...

But, instead of going for the security guard, Foxy had grabbed his computer and run back out the doorway, quick as anything.

Mike blinked in shock for a few minutes. Had that actually happened?

Curiosity got the better of him, and he pulled up the feed of Pirates Cove.

All four animatronics were there. And huddled around the computer, which Foxy had plugged into the wall.

They stayed that way for hours.

Well, an hour at least, After that, Mike's circulatory system crashed off of its adrenaline high and he fell asleep.

When his phone alarm when off at 6 am, he startled awake, to see the computer back on its desk, and the animatronics back in their places.

Weird. Upping their intelligence must have made them able to recognize that he was a person and not a bare endoskeleton.

Go figure.

The next night, he'd brought a gun, deciding to take matters into his own hands. He felt slightly better about the whole thing, knowing that he wasn't condemning his replacement to a painful death.

Plus, if he did it here, then he wouldn't have to worry about someone he knew finding the body. Management was probably far beyond used to dealing with corpses, anyway.

As he raised the gun to his head, Freddy came in.

Saw what he was doing.

And crumpled the gun up like it was made of tinfoil before taking the computer with him.

Huh.

After the aborted suicide attempt, Mike snorted in sardonic amusement, and left his post, making his way out to a bridge, fully intending to jump off of it.

As he stepped up onto the ledge, he was pulled back by an irate Chica, carried bodily back to Freddy's, and deposited into his seat, while the other three animatronics watched.

He stared back at them with flat disbelieving eyes.

What the hell was going on here?


	2. Chapter 2

Well, Bonnie had disappeared for a few hours after that. Mile could only assume that he was in the Kitchen, though why the rabbit would be there when the rest were still onstage huddled around the computer, he had no idea.

When he clocked out that day, he still hadn't figured it out. At least, not until he'd gotten back to his house. After that, it was obvious.

Someone, most likely Bonnie, had child-proofed his house. His guns were gone from the gun-safe, the knives and forks were all gone from the kitchen, as were his razors from the bathroom.

Hah. Amateur efforts at best. He still had his shoelaces. And all the leftover prescriptions in the medicine cabinet. If they really wanted to stop him, they'd have to try much harder than that.

But not right now; now was time for sleeping. He could kill himself when he was less tired.

* * *

><p>When he woke up that evening, Mike was so groggy that he didn't even remember about suicide until he was already at work, at which point it was no longer a viable option.<p>

Although, when he saw the animatronics heading for the spare suits, he wasn't so sure. None of them came for the computer. They just lined up the empty suits, disassembled them, then put them back together.

Their movements were slow, and much more robotic than usual.

When they were done with their tinkerings, all four stared at the suits for a few minutes longer. Then, as one, they turned and headed for his office.

Intense interest in the empty suits followed by intense interest in him.

Captain, four hostiles off the starboard bow. All hands, stand by for pants-shitting.

Foxy was just walking with the rest of them, and they were all coming from the right. Not that Mike _liked_ the normal routines, per se, but he was liking the change even less. When they got to the end of the hall, he slammed the door down, just to be safe.

A minute later, there was a tapping at the window.

Mike flickered on the light, regarding the four animatronics with a flat stare.

"What?" he mouthed in an exaggerated manner.

They didn't respond.

He checked the lights a minute later, and saw that they were gone. He opened the door and then looked at the camera feeds, but he didn't find them. Meaning that they were all in the Kitchen, or maybe Bonnie had decided to take them back to his place. God, he hoped that wasn't the case.

The audio feed of the kitchen was very, very loud, with such a cacophony of screeching and clanking that he could have sworn at least one of the animatronics was getting their limbs torn off.

After nearly fifteen minutes, the sounds showed no sign of dying down.

Well, Mike wasn't suicidal for nothing. After another five minutes of nothing happening, he, of course, headed straight for the kitchens.

He opened the door, and flipped on the light immediately, favoring the element of surprise. He saw the four animatronics fallen over, motionless, on the floor.

Correction, he saw four empty suits on the floor.

And four endoskeletons trying to hack themselves to pieces with kitchen implements. They looked up and flinched back, when they saw him standing there.

"You know," said Mike, leaning against the door-frame, "I'm pretty sure that this is against the rules."

* * *

><p>At that point there was nothing to do but have a staring contest. He made a circuit of eye-contact with the endoskeletons, which were some of the damn creepiest things he had ever seen.<p>

"So," said Mike into the empty silence. "From here, I see three ways we can go:

"One," he said, "You all get back into your suits, go back to trying to kill me, and things return to normal."

Mike pushed off the wall and holstered his flashlight. "Two," he said, "you get your shit together and get over yourselves. Because something has obviously changed."

One of them fidgeted, and the whirring of servos was much more obvious than it normally was.

"Three," he continued, "no one changes. You wreck yourselves, and drive the place out of business. Which might be what you want, but it also means that I get fired. And if I get fired, you have three guesses on what I'll do next." Not that he could see why they didn't want him to kill himself, but if they tore themselves apart on his watch, management was going to sue.

"Food for thought," he told them. "Anyway, I'll be in the security office," he said.

Mike walked back down the hallway, half expecting one of the machines to grab him and end things right then and there.

But he made it, and went back to scanning the camera feeds.

Nothing happened until five am, when the animatronics, once again suited up, slunk back to their spots.

* * *

><p>The next night, Mike brought popcorn into work, and, when the clock rolled over into midnight, he was in the kitchen, wasting power using the microwave.<p>

Chica breezed into the room just as the timer dinged. Mike nodded at her as he ripped the bag open and dumped it into a mixing bowl. He put another bag in and started the timer. When that was done, he took his bowl of buttery salt puffs and made rounds of the restaurant, before arriving back at his office and finding all four of them there, Freddy sitting in his chair.

They were listening to the phone messages left by the previous security guard and all sitting very still.

"It's a backward message," Mike told them, after the fifth message ended, around a mouthful of popcorn, from his perch on the desk. "Hell if I can see the relevance of it, though."

He pulled up the security feeds, checking the rooms, briefly. When he put the screen back down, the four were gone.

Mike grabbed another fistful of popcorn and decided to check his email.

* * *

><p>It was Tuesday of the next week, when Mike received ten used laptops, half as many new smartphones, a coil of wire, and a soldering iron in the mail, all addressed to one 'Fred Foster.'<p>

Mike took a wild guess and threw them in his car on the way to work, leaving them on the stage before heading in to his office.

That night the cameras showed the other three animatronics disassembling both Foxy and the electronics. When they put the Fox Pirate back together, a good chunk of the microchips and wiring from the computers and phones weren't there anymore, having been cannibalized as upgrades for the fox.

The next day, another box of supplies came, which he toted in. That night they disassembled Bonnie.

The pattern continued through Chica and Freddy.

On Friday, he received a text which read "_Hi, Mike. We've got your number P -)_ "

Mike looked at Pirates Cove on the feed, to see that Foxy was waving at him.

He saved that number as P. Fox

"_Let's Eat!_" got saved as C. Carmel

An ASCII art bunny he saved as B. Imoto.

And "_Heheheh_," was saved as F. Baron

In reply he sent "_this is some matrix level bullshit srsly_."

Mike sighed and put his phone down, pulling up his email on the computer. Not seeing anything new, he decided to check his bank statement, looked again, and calculated that he was now getting paid thirty bucks an hour.

He picked his phone back up.

"_And I, for one_," he typed, "_welcome our new Robot Overlords_."


	3. Chapter 3

Well, after that, as far as Mike was concerned, he was no longer working for Freddy Fazbear's. He was, in fact, working for Freddy Fazbear himself. Along with Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy the Pirate.

Because, frankly, anyone who would pay him thirty bucks an hour for sometimes literally sleeping on the job was entitled to a lot of leeway, when it came to everything else.

That's not to say that Mike didn't still slam the doors in their faces whenever he was bored and felt like being an asshole, but that had lost a lot of its charm since they simply walked away and texted '_sorry_' whenever that happened.

His daily routine had altered somewhat drastically in the last few weeks from what it had been when he'd first started. He'd get up around eight or nine, do his makeup, and watch the news while he ate breakfast.

Not that he was really a makeup kind of guy; he just didn't think it would be a good thing if people noticed that the dark circles under his eyes had disappeared. Change led to suspicion, and suspicion led to investigation.

After that, he'd throw whatever packages had come in the mail into the car and head to work, making sure to flip off any members of management he passed on the way in, which were few and far between, but it had happened before, and it was always fun when it did. Then he'd dump the mail onto the stage and head into the office to catch up on his stories.

He'd still check the camera feeds, of course, but if there was anything that got past the four animatronics, then Mike was sure as hell that he wouldn't be able to deal with it.

Besides, Mike was also sure that this peaceful calm won't last forever, and probably won't even last for long. Something was gonna give.

At that point, it probably wouldn't be Mike. He'd been much less suicidal since his debtors had all simultaneously sent him letters congratulating him on the repayment of his loans. He was also raking in the dough at work. He could buy new clothes before his old ones fell completely apart, and he never had to skip meals anymore. Last week, he even went to a movie.

No, his newly acquired money was on one of two causes:

The animatronics, for one, could easily decide that he knew too much and needed to die. If that was what happened, Mike didn't see any way to stop it. They'd found out where his house was, what his phone number was. He was pretty sure that they could find him, even if he tried to run. Nothing he could do about that one, and he had no way of knowing how likely it was, to start with.

But the most likely scenario, he thought, was that something would go wrong in upper management. Either the company would finally fail, or someone would make a stupid decision that caused the company to fail.

And then the animatronics would be slated for shutdown.

God only knew what would happen then.


	4. Chapter 4

It was, in fact, no later than next month that something changed, and it was neither column A nor column B.

"Excuse me," said a guy in a trenchcoat, who had accosted Mike on his way in to work, "I'm Detective Welles. Do you have a minute?"

Mike snorted, and answered "Above my pay grade, buddy. Go talk to PR," before slamming the door in the guy's face and making his way through the dark building.

"I already tried PR," said the man, having barged in and following him. Mike veered off course and headed for the East Hall, away from the animatronics and his office, so that the guy wouldn't have a view of anything important.

"Not my problem," said Mike. "If you don't leave, I'm calling the police for trespassing."

"Alright, alright," said the guy, backing off, "I'm leaving. But if you decide you want to talk..." he gave Mike a business card, "...give me a call. One way or another, this place is going down. Careful not to let yourself get dragged down with it."

"Fuck you very much," said Mike, with a cheery wave, watching to make sure that the guy left, and locking the door behind him.

After that, he headed down to the stage area. That bastard had delayed him until the midnight turnover. He gave Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica a nod, as he placed the boxes onstage. It wasn't that he hated being there when they entered free-roaming mode, but it did tend to set off ptsd-esque instincts.

He heard Foxy come up behind him. Without turning around he held out the business card. Foxy examined it for a moment before handing it back.

"So," said Mike. "How do you want to play this?"

The four machines stood perfectly still, as though all their power were on processing, with none left over for movement. A few minutes later, just after they'd started moving again, Mike received a text from Chica.

"_Your choice,"_ it read. _"We, personally, want to bankrupt the company. We've already put measures in place to prevent our own destruction. But what about you? What will you do if Freddy's closes?'_

He looked up from his phone. "Will I kill myself, you mean?"

She nodded.

"No," said Mike, "I don't think so. My life now is significantly better than it was… so, I'll need evidence. I'll make tapes of the last guard's phone messages. And I don't think there was any actual film in the security cameras, so we've got nothing there. Guess we'll just have to take matters into our own hands..."

Chapter 9

* * *

><p>"Why again was it so important that I meet you half an hour before you shift starts?" asked Detective Welles.<p>

"I'm giving you a tour," Mike explained, as he lead the other man down the hall. "I can't do that once shift starts. We'll be stuck in my office for six hours. If you need to use the facilities, I suggest you do so now."

"I'm fine," Welles said, looking at Mike as though he was insane.

"I'm not crazy," Mike said, picking up on the subtext, "but if you found out about this any other way, then you wouldn't believe me."

They passed the stage. "This here's Freddy Fucktard," Mike said, waving his hand in the animatronics' direction, "along with his band: Xeno-Chicken and Pedo Bunny."

"I thought the bear was Freddy Fazbear," said the detective, looking confused and also a little wary of the intense enmity that the security guard seemed to hold for what were obviously non-living objects.

"Wait til the end of the shift and then get back to me." Mike said, leading him over to Pirate's Cove. "Come on. Last one. He pulled aside the curtain. "Psycho Fox," said Mike with a sneer, glaring daggers at the animatronic. "He wants to be your friend."

Mike's watch alarm beeped. "Eleven fifty," he said. "Come on."

Welles trailed after him, making sure to get footage of everything with his camera.

"Do you mind if I plug my phone in to charge?" Welles asked, once they were in the security office.

"Yes," said Mike, "I mind. Don't do it."

"Alright, sorry," said the detective, who was beginning to reconsider the reliability of the night guard as an informant.

"Do you have a tape-player?" Mike asked distractedly, skimming a news article about the US branch PA on his phone, trying to dispel some of the nervous energy in the room by ignoring it.

"Right here," said the detective, holding up the device.

Mike handed him a cassette. "These are the messages left for me by the previous night-guard," he told the other man. "They're the only reason I'm still alive."

The Detective played through the messages, his eyebrows rising higher and higher with each message. "This is a joke right?" he asked, once they were done with.

The clock turned over the midnight. "I don't know," said Mike, pulling up the security feed. "Is it?"

"Oh my god, that one just moved." Welles leaned closer to the screen.

"Yes,"

"Are you doing that?" he asked.

Mike toggled to a different screen. Chica was missing. "No," he said.

"Look out, look out, look out—"

"Shut up," said Mike.

"How can this be happening?" the Detective wanted to know, after a few hours of being trapped in the security office, he no longer cared about maintaining his dignity, let alone his professionalism.

Mike slammed the door down when the light revealed Bonnie standing outside the door, not bothering to answer.

"They wouldn't really kill us, would they?" Welles pressed.

"How would I know?" said Mike, annoyed. "They've never gotten in."

"Why don't they just keep the doors closed all the time?" said Welles. "Or keep the robots in a locked room..."

Mike couldn't find Freddy anywhere. That was awful. At least he had an extra set of eyes to watch the doors... "I can only assume that they've tried and the robots escaped," Mike answered.

"Why don't they just shut them down?" said Welles, his voice starting to inch higher in hysteria.

"The place would go out of business if they lost any more revenue. Can't afford it," said Mike, who hadn't really had time to think about it, and just spat out the first thing to come to mind.

"Why do you keep coming back here?" asked Welles. "If I make it to six, I'm never setting foot in here again, daylight or no."

"I'm blackmailing the company," said Mike, being selective with the truth. "Not a lot; they don't have any money, but enough to pay back my loans and keep myself from bankruptcy. It's more than I can get in any other job, especially with no education and my kind of handicap."

Mike touched the orbit near his glass eye lightly before slamming his hand down on the door button to keep out Foxy.

"I can't stay here long term," Mike continued, "but if I quit, I'm fairly certain that the company will kill me. Way I see it, you're my best shot at getting out of here."

"Oh, god, oh god, oh god..." Welles was not responsive, and was making inarticulate gestures at the door. Mike wasn't sure the detective had heard anything said over the last few minutes.

"Fuck you, chicken duck," said Mike, as an afterthought, slamming the door shut on Chica.

"Oh god, it's only five thirty, and we're down to seven percent power," said Welles.

"We'll probably be fine. So long as Foxy doesn't try to rush us," said Mike, checking Pirate's Cove again.

Foxy did, in fact, rush them at five-fifty, and they sat in the dark, extremely still. At five fifty-nine Freddy came by to play his song (the long version, thankfully), and the clock ticked over to six am just before he finished.

Mike would have denied it but, at that moment, his hands were shaking.

When the night ended Welles was out of the building before six o' two. Mike found him locked in his car, and, after coaxing him out, answered questions for a few hours, once the Detective had calmed down and taken Mike's pointed hints about maybe getting breakfast.

"How long have you been doing this?" was one of the last questions he answered.

"Four months," said Mike. "It is hell, but it beats living on the streets."

"I don't think so," said Welles, who was by this time convinced that Mike Schmidt was both braver than anyone he'd ever met, and also stark raving mad.

"For you, maybe," said Mike, who was starting to suspect that Welles had never had to go hungry a day in his life, and might possibly have some robot phobias of his own to deal with.

* * *

><p>That night, Mike went back into work, wanting nothing more than to sleep his shift away, having stayed out way too late the previous day.<p>

First, though, he stopped by the stage. And waited.

At midnight, the animatronics unfroze. Mike held off until Foxy arrived before starting off with, "He bought it. I'd expect shit to hit the fan no later than tomorrow. Once that happens, we're one step closer to victory."

He paused, considering whether there was anything else that needed discussion.

"Anyway," Mike continued, "I'm taking the night off. Don't kill anyone while I'm gone."

His phone vibrated. _"Mike, we're sorry,"_ read the text. He didn't check who it was from. He assumed it was a group effort, in any case.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "For what exactly?" he asked.

"_Almost killing you,"_ came the reply, it was from Foxy.

"I know," said Mike, trying to sound at least vaguely reassuring. What exactly did they want him to say to that? You would think that working for robots would mean having to deal with _less_ emotional crap than you'd get working for humans. Why did he have to wind up with the sentimental automatons?

"_Mike?"_

"Yeah?"

"_What about fire?"_

That could be a problem. "Come again?" Mike said.

"_You banned killing people," _Bonnie sent him.

"_What are your feelings on fire?" _That one was Freddy.

Mike considered this. "Fire is good." he said. "Cathartic," he added, recalling the first time he'd been suspended from High School.

With that, he turned and headed for the door. "If anyone needs me, I'll be asleep, so try not to need me."

The four watched him go, but Mike didn't look back.

* * *

><p>The next day, a story was featured on the local news sites: "Local Pizzaria Burns Down: Arson Suspected."<p>

Mike had a group saved for texting the animatronics. "Looks like someone had fun," he sent out.

"_You're late,"_ came the reply.

"Can't be late for what's not there anymore. Besides, it's daytime."

"_You slept all night. You're on dayshift now."_

The next thing he received from them was an address.

"Okay, now I'm curious." he sent.

He took his time eating breakfast and such, before heading out to wherever it was he was supposed to work now.


	5. Chapter 5

When he got there, it was a hospital.

Mike double-checked the address, and yep, it matched.

"Why did you buy a hospital?" he sent, sitting out in the parking lot.

"_You don't know that we bought it," _sent Freddy.

"_We might have made a generous donation to build a new wing, which will henceforth be our headquarters," _sent Bonnie.

"_We might be posing as doctors in what will surely be a series of hilarious escapades," _sent Chica.

"But, what actually happened is that you bought the hospital, right?"

" _...yes," _Chica admitted.

"Why?"

"_It makes for a good front: secure location, a renewable source of money..." said Bonnie._

"And?" prompted Mike, suspecting there would be more.

"... a_nd Foxy really, really wants to be a cyborg," Bonnie finished._

* * *

><p>After using his Freddy's ID to open the hospital's employee entrance, and consulting the map next to the elevator, Mike eventually found where he was supposed to be. His keycard also let him into the meeting room.<p>

The animatronics in the room looked much more human than they normally did.

The guy with the crazy eyes and the fedora had to be Freddy. The blonde woman whose face seemed to be locked into a permanent grin would be Chica. The redhead built like a tank was probably Foxy. Which would leave the tall guy with dirty blond hair as Bonnie.

Granted, they were still nowhere near convincingly disguised. Their movements were less smooth than muscular power, at all but its worst, and they didn't seem to be capable of speech or changing expression. Their hair and skin had a plasticine quality that reminded Mike of department store mannequins more than anything else.

"So that's why you wanted a 3D printer," said Mike, as an icebreaker. He paused before continuing. "You all fail the Turing Test, by the way. To the robot labor camps with you. Chop chop!"

"_Shut up, Mike,"_ sent Chica.

"_I'l like to see you try and pass yourself off as a different species, Mr. Critic," _Foxy added.

"_Order, order,"_ the words scrolled across the laptop's screen after Freddy's username, which was sitting in front of where he was obviously meant to sit._ "This meeting will come to order."_

"_Why don't we just give Mike a headset?"_ Bonnie sent. _"For that matter, why do we all have to be in the same room?"_

"_Because," sent Freddy. "We are goddamn professionals and we are going to act like it. What if we recruit more members in the future? Need I remind you that there are other Synthetic Intelligences in the world?"_

"Most hospitals have compuer-assisted surgery," Mike offered. "Might even be some in the hospital."

"_Really?" _asked Foxy.

"_See?"_ said Freddy, _"Potential allies are everywhere. Might even hire more humans, in the future. So we are going to act like the operational models we want to attract, and not like clunky prototypes stuck in R&D. Clear?"_

"_Sure," sent Chica._

"_Fine," wrote Foxy._

"_Way to suck all the fun out of life," added Bonnie._

"_What was that, Bonnie?"_

"_Okey dokey, 'I'm-not-Smokey'."_

Over the next few hours, as they discussed such banalities as mission statements and brand identities, Mike came to realize that while, yes, these may once have been homicidal robots... at their core, by design and personality alike, the four animatronics were corporate scumbags through and through: heartless machines, when it came to self-interest, and lying bastards, almost on-par with Mike himself.

He, honestly, hadn't been expecting that.

Then again, they'd somehow managed to buy a hospital while looking like villains from a b-list horror movie, so maybe he really should have.

* * *

><p>And that was how things settled into a new norm. Mike now worked 9-3, Monday - Friday. His official title was as Security Consultant for Upper Management, but Mike's job actually mostly consisted of utilizing his ability to pass a Turing Test on command. He dealt with the unavoidable face-to-face interactions that were required in running a hospital. As the Big Four allocated more and more underlings to do the actual work, however, these became fewer and farther between.<p>

After a few months, he was back to watching TV and playing first person shooters for hours at a time while on the clock.

On his off days, Mike usually indulged in his finely cultivated habit of not giving a fuck.

If he left the house, he would make an effort to remember to wear a shirt, but he did not always succeed.

Today was a day where he'd remembered to wear his shirt, but not a day where he'd remembered to wash it.

His hair was doing whatever it felt like doing.

And he was going for a barefoot walk down to the general store to buy more corn chips and cheese in a can.

Mike was relatively happy with his life choices. That had never been true before, and it was kind of a weird feeling.

On his way to the store, he noticed that a white car with blacked out windows had eased to a stop next to him. One of the windows rolled down, and he came face-to-face with none other than Detective Welles.

"Hello, Schmidt," said the Detective, "Got a few minutes?"

Mike appeared to think about it for a moment. "Why the hell not?" he said. He invited himself into the car, climbing into the back seat, and grinning at Welles at he wiggled his bare toes in the carpet.

"Looks like you've been down on your luck," Welles observed.

Mike shrugged, "Can't complain," he said. "Hell on Earth has returned from whence it came. I'm sure I'll start worrying sooner or later, but right now, I'm alive, life is beautiful, and cocaine is affordable." Mike let his eye twitch, letting Welles make whatever he would of the gesture.

Welles frowned. "Mike, I know you've been through a lot, but drugs aren't the answer."

"Well," said Mike, "you see, that really depends on what the question is..."

"You are more than this," Welles pressed on. "I wanted to talk with the man who survived four months in a living nightmare: the man with nerves of steel and the ability to adapt to anything. But, sadly, it looks like that man died along with his enemies. I mourn his death."

Mike looked down at his folded hands. "It's just... how do you go back to a normal life, after something like that?" he asked. "Ordinary people... they don't understand. It's not like I can get counseling, they'd stick me on meds, maybe even institutionalize me. How do you go back to normal, knowing things like that exist, that there may be more of them out there?"

"You can't," said Welles.

Mike looked up.

"Well," Welles winced, "Maybe some people can... but you and me? It changed us, Mike. Changed the way we see things. You can't go back to a normal life, but you can do your best to make sure it doesn't happen to others. You're right, there are other monsters out there: demons, criminals, parahumans, even other rogue AI. I work for an organization dedicated to stopping them, and protecting the innocents, so that they never have to suffer what we've suffered."

He turned a corner, and they were back where they'd started. Welles stopped the car.

"You could join us, you know," he told him, with a sad sort of smile. "We could use someone like you. Most of our security guards don't last. Can't take the heat. You could make a real difference with us."

Welles handed him a business card.

"Or, you can stay here and overdose," he said. "Your choice."

The window began to roll up. Welles shifted over into drive.

"Think about it," he urged, just before the window closed.

The car drove away, and Mike was left behind.

* * *

><p>Mike forgot about the store and went back home. He closed the blinds, sat down cross-legged on the living room couch, and considered his options.<p>

Because, if he were going to be truly honest with himself, this was the was the first time in his life that he'd ever really had options to choose from.

His child- and young adult-hood had been spent trapped in a perpetual state of oscillation between his two old friends: shitty luck and abject poverty. The distance between those two had gradually reduced itself over the years, until they had eventually merged into a singularity and taken up residence in a pizza joint known as Freddy Fazbear's.

And that was where, in any predictable universe, his life would have ended long before he'd even had the chance to grow suicidal.

But, somehow, that hadn't happened. He'd stayed alive long enough to catch on to the learning curve, and then been saved at his lowest point by pure, dumb luck. Which, admittedly, was balanced out by the fact that he'd awakened four deadly AI, all of whom had killed before, and who he was now entirely certain were capable of killing again.

At the time, he'd brushed such ramifications aside, because he'd still been caught up in his own problems, and he hadn't exactly been getting enough sleep for critical thinking.

Later though, even after he'd had time to realize how dangerous things had become, he'd still made sure to always act in support of the animatronics. And in return they'd treated him like a well-behaved pet, indulging his whims, and allowing him a place beside them.

At least, Mike was afraid that was what they were doing. It was also possible that they really did see him as an ally and a colleague, but they were so alien that he really didn't have any way to know for sure.

Because the four of them really weren't human, not in the slightest. They were getting better at small talk, and their disguises were inching closer to adequate every week, but their goals, their hopes, their dreams, if they even had such things in the first place, were inscrutable.

Yes, they'd saved him when he'd tried to kill himself, but that could very well have been caused by the jump in intelligence reactivating their compulsion to follow the laws of robotics. The same laws which they'd broken, not even a week later, when they'd tried to kill themselves.

In the beginning, he really hadn't known what else he could have done. He'd opened Pandora's box, and there was no good way to shut it again. He didn't know what backup copies of their programs they'd made or where they were hidden (but he was fairly certain that they had made and hidden them). It was entirely possible that the world was already doomed, and it was only a matter of time. He wanted to believe in them, but with the fate of the world at stake, it might be too much of a risk.

Welles' offer had come down like a light from the heavens: an organization dedicated to protecting humanity. He even mentioned that they'd dealt with rogue AI before. He could call them right now, and put this whole situation into better, more capable hands. The question was, should he?

Mike thought long and hard before coming to a decision, drifting off to sleep not long afterwards, into uneasy dreams, haunted by shadows of the past and future.

* * *

><p>The next day, Mike went in to work, even though it was a Sunday.<p>

He'd first stopped by the break room, crammed a couple of donuts into his mouth, then gone up to the executive break room and crammed even more donuts into his mouth. Then, finally, he'd barged into Foxy's office, chewing obnoxiously, and scattering crumbs everywhere.

Foxy, who now looked more like a human who'd survived an unfortunate plastic surgery accident than a robot trying to look human, glanced up at him before returning to his work.

Mike's phone buzzed. _"What can I do you for?"_ Foxy had sent him.

Mike held up an index finger to indicate that he would speak in a moment.

Foxy nodded, and went back to ignoring him.

Finally, Mike swallowed the last of his sugary breakfast, going over his plan one last time. What one of them heard, the other three always seemed aware of. Mike suspected that they shared something of a hive mind between them. Their personality differences were much more subtle than those observed between different humans, which fit with Mike's theory. This would be somewhat creepy, if it turned out to be true, but it served Mike's purposes well enough on this occasion.

"I demand a second salary," Mike said.

"_Okay,"_ sent Foxy. _"Would you like fries with that?"_

"_Hang on,"_ sent Freddy. _"Mike, why exactly do you _need_ a second salary?"_

Mike stared at Foxy, who was now looking at him, and had been able to change his expression to something vaguely resembling interest. "Because I got a second job," Mike answered.

He got another text, this one from Bonnie. _"Mike, salaries are usually paid by your employer. If whoever-it-is isn't paying you, that's what we would call 'volunteer work'." _

"But you _are_ my employers."

"_For this job, yes, but we only have the one on record, Mike," _Chica sent him.

"No," said Mike, "I'm pretty sure I work two jobs for you guys."

"_The first is obviously security guard,"_ sent Foxy. _"What would this 'second' job title be then?"_

The man grinned, before flicking a business card over to the robot, who caught the piece of paper and scanned it for the others to examine as well.

"Spy," Mike answered them.


	6. Chapter 6

"_Have you contacted them yet?"_ Freddy asked, after Mike had finished going over his encounter with Detective Welles.

"Nope," said Mike.

"_Then we have time,"_ sent Chica._ "A month, perhaps two. That was a serious offer to spy on them?"_

"Are you seriously going to pay me for it?"

"_Just making sure."_

"_Well, every spy needs a support network," _said Bonnie. _"Once we have a physical location, we should be able to hack their servers. Definitely, if you can smuggle a virus onto the company computers."_

"_We could start making dossiers on our enemies/competitors," _said Foxy_. "This would give us a huge advantage in reaching our target demographic..."_

After a few minutes of brainstorming, Mike got bored and tuned them out. Something was bothering him. He blinked down at his phone.

Mike took his false eye out of its socket and washed it by splashing it into a container of saline solution, before replacing it. Much better. Probably should have washed his hands first, but at least it didn't feel like there was grit under his eyelids anymore...

Mike looked up and found that all four animatronics were staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"_Mike, what do you know about spy cameras?"_

He considered it. "That feature costs extra."

* * *

><p>The robots in preparation for Mike leaving on his spy mission, had dug up a self-aware AI from Florida (that had started out as a surgery-assistance program), who they'd contracted out for Foxy's cyborg implants. Also, to construct a false eye that would double as a spy camera for Mike.<p>

This new sentient didn't seem to have a name or a body; such things were apparently uninteresting to it. From what they could tell, it had adopted the doctor's code of conduct at its own hospital as its moral code. Which was kind of a relief for Mike, since it insisted on doctor-patient confidentiality.

"_There are two ways we can go about this,"_ it 'said' (actually, typed in to display on its screen, since it doesn't seem to like texting as much as the big four).

"Which are?" Mike typed, since this guy/girl/who-even-knew didn't seem to ever have its audio sensors turned on.

"_One of them is exactly what you suggested:"_ said the machine, which Mike had started referring to in his head as 'Dr. Mrs. Hack-n-Slash' in lieu of an actual moniker, _"a false eye capable of recording and storing visual data, which is virtually undetectable by conventional means. If that is what you want, then I can give it to you."_

"And the other option?" Mike asked.

"_Greater benefits, also greater risks. If you don't mind being a guinea pig, I've always wanted to crack the problem of eye transplantation. Based on your physical data, it might be possible to hook the false eye into what's left of your optic nerve. Or to create an artificial optic nerve, completely from scratch. You could have binocular vision again."_

"Depth perception would be convenient... and I really could use all the peripheral vision I can get. Paranoia is a harsh master." Mike paused. "You mentioned risks?"

"_Well, there's the question of whether or not it would even work. Involving the optic nerve automatically turns it into brain surgery. Not to mention hooking the eye up to the orbital muscles. The recovery time would be longer, and the risks of unintended damage greater."_

The machine paused, computing further possibilities.

"_On the purely practical side of things, you wouldn't be able to remove the eye, like you would with the first option. The eye would have to have wireless capabilities, in order to store your footage. You're an organic. You can't operate the firewalls needed to protect the datastream yourself. I gather you were planning on giving that access to your employers?"_

"I was," typed Mike, "but while we're on the topic, why couldn't I just have normal firewalls?"

"_You could... but any non-living firewall is easy prey to an inorganic. Your employers ...whether you gave them the firewall passwords or not, would have access to all footage taken. In other words, what you see, they will also see. Everything that you see, they will see. The advantage of giving them access means that no one else will be able to hack your vision feeds, since your employers would be obligated to incorporate your firewalls into their own, to protect their own interests." _

"Hmm." Mike didn't type that one, there was no point.

"_Don't feel like you have to decide right this second," _said the machine.

"Decisions already made, just thinking about the logistics." Wasn't like that eye could get any blinder, so might as well go for it. Mike supposed he could always pull half an Oedipus, if his loyalties changed. Either that or wear an eyepatch as a stopgap. And, up until his loyalties actually _did_ change, he could have two eyes again. It really was a no-brainer. Mike grinned. "Hack-n-Slash," he said. "Make me a biclops."

* * *

><p>Surgery, Mike decided, was a bitch. An eyestabbing, heartless bitch, and oh god, where were his painkillers?<p>

His blind flailing knocked the bottle off the nightstand, and Mike started swearing up a storm.

The pills inside the bottle clacked together, and against the side of the plastic bottle as they hit the floor, then again, as something picked them up. Mike felt the bed dip and the medicine was dropped on the bed, next to his hand.

Mike cracked his eyes open to see robo-cat gazing unblinkingly at him.

"Thanks," said Mike. The cat nodded, and leapt away.

Swallowing down a pill, Mike flopped back into bed, not yet ready to face the day.

He heard the creaking of the door, as the cat pushed it open to leave, as well as the faint mechanical sounds that indicated weasel-ball was following it.

Seriously, fuck surgery.

A faint buzzing from the vents seemed to indicate that the swarm was making their 'whenever the fuck they felt like it' rounds of the house, leaving robogami as the only missing unit.

After getting surface-perfect human bodies down, the animatronics had quickly focused their engineering efforts into other avenues of usefulness. They kept spare bodies around like Mike kept spare clothes, and quite a few of them got dumped off at Mike's house for beta-testing. Especially the 'drone class' avatars, as Mike had come to refer to them.

Robo-cat was Foxy's and probably the best of the lot. It could pass the Purring Test with flying colors, but its claws and teeth could cut through wood and most plastics.

Chica's drones were usually some demonic variant on the weasel-ball: armored spheres that could roll themselves by moving their outer panels to push off the ground, morph into hexapods, or even mini death-coptors. Those things were absolutely full of gyroscopes, and seemed to be designed more for defense than for camouflage.

Bonnie usually preferred to work with swarms of insect-sized minibots. They were sabotage drones as much as they were for reconnaissance.

Freddy was still playing around with designs. The two finalists seemed to be an amorphous blob-bot that could change its color and texture to hide in small spaces and remain unnoticed, as well as a folding mars-rover type bot that could fold itself completely flat, if needed, or into various other conformations.

Mike had fisted his hands into his hair and begun massaging his scalp, trying to knead away his headache until the meds kicked in, when his phone had buzzed with a message.

_"Don't forget to do your eye exercises."_ Bonnie had sent him.

Mike groaned. Physical therapy was a bitch...

* * *

><p>A month and a half later saw Mike back at work, and seeing out of both eyes again. After a week of further brainstorming and planning, they finally decided to move Operation 'Impossible World' forward.<p>

He called Detective Welles.

"You were right," Mike said, after the Detective had picked up. "About... a lot of things. You still need security guards?"

Welles chuckled. "Mike, you've just made a very smart career decision..."

* * *

><p>AN: Got the drone ideas from YouTube. The most blatant rip off was probably from Zenta's MorphHex MKIII, followed by the self-folding robots from Harvard. Feel free to call out any others that you recognize.<p> 


End file.
